


Do You Know What You Got Into

by fictionalcandie



Series: superstars with fangirls [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-29
Updated: 2009-11-29
Packaged: 2017-12-10 00:05:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James didn’t show up at his big Quidditch to-do with Sirius on his arm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Know What You Got Into

When James went back to his and Lily’s flat to tell her that she’d been right, they did need to break up, because he really _was_ in love with Sirius, it went ridiculously smoothly. He even said he was going to take Sirius to the fancy Quidditch thing, which also went smoothly on account of her having predicted it (in fact, it turned out, she hadn’t even really bought a dress for it) — but then he mentioned his plans to publicly confirm to anyone who happened to ask that yes, he _was_ taking _Sirius_ as his date, in the most _date_ -like sense of _date_ one could possibly come up with. Only that… didn’t go smoothly. At all.

“Are you _nuts_?” she exclaimed, after a whole half a minute of silence. She slammed down the fork she’d been using to eat her brownie a la mode, a little bit more violently than James thought was completely necessary as it rattled the entire coffee table. “You can’t do _that_.”

James blinked at her. “Why not?” he eventually managed to ask.

“What?” she cried, incredulous, and at James’s continued blank look, let out an extremely heartfelt groan. “Oh, God, you’re hopeless, honey. Come on.”

—

She dragged him back to Sirius’s and barely let the door shut behind them before she was planting her hands on her hips and glaring at Sirius, demanding, “Tell me you didn’t approve of this idiocy, Black.”

“Um.” Sirius only had time to shoot James one terrified, confused look, because the next moment Lily was cursing loudly. Sirius cleared his throat. “I’m sorry…?” he offered.

Following which, Lily sat them down on Sirius’s hideously uncomfortable but comfortingly expensive couch and explained to them — using the smallest words possible — why it was a bad idea to appear anywhere as a couple anytime within _at least_ six weeks of the day her break up with James became _public_.

“… I mean, you don’t _want_ your critics labeling Sirius a _home-wrecker_ , do you?” she concluded, very sternly.

James shook his head contritely, while Sirius just grinned and looked sheepish.

Lily threw up her hands and told them to do whatever they wanted.

—

They discussed it.

While doing so, they even managed not to touch each other for an entire twenty minutes.

Lily said she was proud of them. She also rolled her eyes.

—

James didn’t show up at his big Quidditch to-do with his arm around Sirius, though.

Instead, James and Sirius (in their perfectly matched silver- and gold-tinted robes) showed up with Lily (who eventually agreed to wear the little black dress that she and Sirius procured during an emergency shopping trip into Muggle London, of which James stubbornly refused to have any part) on their arms, walking between them like some sort of cheerful redheaded set of shackles (since she hardly ever let go of either of their arms), announcing that she and James had broken things off the previous week for “personal reasons” but they were _all_ still friends.

She said the last part _a lot_.

“You realise,” one reporter said, practically bouncing on his toes with excitement, “that this means you are now, _officially_ , one of Wizarding Britain’s _hottest_ bachelors, right, James?”

James and Sirius exchanged looks, while Lily stared very carefully at anything but the men on either of her sides. “Uh,” James managed, with Sirius clearing his throat and trying not to laugh, “I guess so?”

The reporter made a little gleeful noise and turned to Sirius. “Having said in the past that James is _just your type_ , you do agree, of course, don’t you, Sirius?”

Sirius made a strangled noise and James’s eyes went comically wide as he laughed nervously.

Lily elbowed them sharply in the ribs.

“I’ve always thought James was one of the hottest anything,” Sirius eventually said, with a nearly straight face.

“Friends,” Lily insisted quickly. “We’re all still friends.”

She yanked on their elbows until they left the reporter far enough behind that he couldn’t ask anymore questions.

“How did you get permission to bring two people?” another reporter asked curiously, catching them by deftly stepping into their path. “I thought the standard number of guests each invitee was allowed was, well, _one_.”

James didn’t pay attention Lily’s narrow-eyed gaze to answer that question. “I went to the people in charge of that kind of thing and had Sirius smile at them. He’s so attractive, nobody knows how to say ‘no’.”

The reporter’s eyes widened with a noticeably avaricious gleam.

Lily groaned and dragged them away from that girl, too.

“Merlin’s lucky shorts, Lily, are you _nuts_?” a different woman with a press pass asked shrilly, bypassing both men almost as if they weren’t present, to thrust herself accusingly in Lily’s face. “Have you _looked_ at James Potter in the last four years?”

“We’re all friends,” Lily said weakly, beginning to look a little wild-eyed.

The three of them mutually threw each other into the safety of the banquet hall.

“Oh, crap,” moaned Lily as soon as they were through the doors, leaning heavily on the arms she held. “I should have just let you two shoot your reputations all to hell and back, that’s what I should have done.”

Sirius kissed the top of her head. “We love you, babe,” he said

“Oh, shit, it’s my coach,” James said, at the same time, and tugged them the other way. “She wants to do you, Sirius, she’s _said_.”

“She knows I don’t swing that way, right?” questioned Sirius as James forcibly led them to their table by the longest route possible. “I mean, I don’t mind _looking_ , and all, but _doing_ —”

“The female population lives in eternal hope,” interrupted Lily dryly. “It’s the only way we can keep our ovaries from exploding.”

“You two do know I was planning to eat tonight, right?” muttered James.

—

James was named Most Valuable Quidditch Player of the Year in his League, which was fantastic.

He tripped all over his tongue during his thank-you speech, though, which was distinctly less than fantastic.

The problem, Lily and Sirius exasperatedly informed him once he’d stammered his way pink-faced back to his seat, was that he hadn’t known which of them he ought to mention first. It was actually not that surprising, therefore, that he’d thanked Lirius and Silly for their support, instead.

The press had a field day. Half of them dug for the “truth” about these “new people” he’d named, and the other half reported on the ever-increasing downward spiral of his addiction to dragon’s blood.

Lily nearly put her head through the kitchen table, and forbid James from leaving the apartment unless she was with him to run damage control.

Sirius came over with three tubs of extra-chocolate-chip ice cream, and made them all listen to half a dozen episodes of Whisper Witch on the Wireless.

James buried his head in the crook of Sirius’s neck and instead of paying attention to the show, happily announced that Sirius smelled _wonderful_.

Lily nearly put her head through the coffee table, as well.

Maybe she should have let them all go out for drinks the night before, following the Quidditch thing, after all.

The fallout of James and Sirius drunkenly snogging in a dark corner couldn’t have been much more of a media circus than this, anyway.

At least, she didn’t think it could have.

Except maybe if Sirius had “accidentally” lost his trousers then, too…

—

Two nights later, James had a spot on a late-night Wireless show for which he’d promised to be present, so Lily _had_ to let him leave — but she did go with him, which really did nothing but encourage rumours that James was in a bad place, and their “break up” was nothing but a publicity stunt.

Fortunately, Sirius unexpectedly showed up partway through the recording.

Unfortunately, Sirius expectedly showed up more-than-partway clothed in leather.

“Oh, Merlin,” squealed the host, clapping happily, as his voice climbed to an octave normally only achieved by adolescent girls. “This is— this is such a _fabulous honor_ , Mr Black.”

“Oh, _man_ ,” squeaked James, and turned pink staring at the cat-o’-nine-tails dangling from Sirius’s hip.

“Well,” replied Sirius, smirking widely, “I really, really wanted to… come. Here.”

“ _Friends_ ,” Lily insisted, completely out of her normal register. She covered her face with both hands. “ _Friends_!”

—

The program’s host couldn’t seem to stop bouncing with excitement. Every time he’d seem to get himself under control while focusing on one of the men, he’d turn his eyes to the other — and just like that he’d be practically flailing again. It was rather like watching a tennis match.

Lily sort of thought it was more like a train wreck.

“We— we really weren’t expecting you to join James— I mean, to be here, today.”

Sirius grinned. “Should I leave?”

“No! No, it’s always a pleasure to have a top,” insisted the host, then as James turned even pinker, quickly sputtered, “I mean, a top flyer, such as yourself.”

“Thank you,” replied Sirius, on the verge of laughter. “I really am, though.”

The host paused, confused. “Er?” he asked.

“A top,” James supplied a little too quickly. “He’s— Or so I’ve… heard.”

The host shot Sirius an intrigued look, along with a little “Oh?”

“I _am_ ,” confirmed Sirius. He sent James a look that was the most suggestive, leering thing Lily had ever seen.

James sort of whimpered and turned pink and grinned all at the same time.

Then he said “I _know_ ” in a particularly smug way that had the host’s eyes practically popping right out of his skull as he very nearly gave himself whiplash glancing between them.

Lily wondered why she bothered trying.

—

“Do I have to _ground_ you to get you to behave?” Lily asked as soon as they were back at her place, where they’d ended up after the interview without really discussing it. Scowling at Sirius, she crossed her arms.

“What?” Sirius raised one brow. “You’re blaming me for _this_?”

On the last word, he waved in the direction of James, who was sitting on the sofa with his hands in his lap, obviously trying very hard to look like he hadn’t just spent thirty minutes on a nationally broadcast Wireless show in a lustful near-stupor, staring at his best friend.

Lily narrowed her eyes at said best friend. “Yes, I’m blaming you! Of course I am! You are _provoking_ him!”

“Would I do that?” inquired Sirius, smirking like he just couldn’t resist.

“Ugh!” huffed Lily, uncrossing her arms and throwing herself onto the couch next to James. “Are you _trying_ to completely ruin your reputation, Sirius?”

“Well, I’m sorry!” His smirk dying abruptly, Sirius sighed explosively. “Maybe _you_ should try wanting something for years, finally finding out you can actually have it, then getting told you have to wait even longer — while it’s _right next to you_ all the fucking time.”

“You could try _staying away_ ,” suggested Lily acerbically.

“No,” James answered for him, sharply. His eyes were still on his hands. “That wouldn’t look good either.”

“Oh. Well.” Lily glared at the ceiling. “You’re right.” She folded her arms again. “Damn it.”

—

Lily wouldn’t let James leave with Sirius when he showed up looking cheerful and unconcerned the following afternoon, being trailed by a half a dozen or so witches and wizard with cameras, who absolutely failed at being inconspicuous.

“It isn’t _safe_ ,” she insisted firmly. “I can’t trust you to behave with him.”

“Please? I’m _bored_!”

“Have a biscuit,” Lily replied unsympathetically, and handed him one from James’s plate.

James eyed her like he might hiss at her or bite her ankles.

“I know,” Sirius blurted, brightly, straightening, biscuit in hand. “We should go shopping.”

After a very brief moment, Lily shot him a hopeful look. “Yeah? You know, actually that might make _me_ feel better…”

James groaned and brought up one hand to cover his face, while the other hovered over his plate to protect his biscuits. “You’d better be planning to go without me,” he grumbled.

“We’ll bring you back something,” promised Sirius, getting to his feet, only a moment before Lily. He contorted to press a swift kiss to the edge of James’s mouth. He stole another biscuit.

“Nothing with glitter!”

“Of course,” replied Lily, patting his cheek as she passed, heading for the door in Sirius’s wake. “It’s really not you.”

“Maybe some extra tight trousers,” added Sirius.

The door closed behind them before the toss-pillow James threw managed to hit it.

—

“It’s so odd to see the two of you without James,” a member of the paparazzi called, clearly hopeful as he tried to corner Sirius and Lily outside their third store, even though nothing they’d said yet had drawn any sort of response.

“Is this why you broke up with James?” another paparazzo cried, and on her heels a third yelled, “Are you guys together now?”

Sirius abruptly came to a stop, turning despite Lily’s futile tugs on his arm to prevent it. “Okay,” he proclaimed in his loudest, clearest voice, looking highly exasperated and glaring at the camera-totting witches and wizards, “I really, really _do not_ swing that way, people.”

The paparazzi stilled for a moment, then one of of them asked almost hopefully, “Not even by accident?”

Sirius stared. “By _accident_?” he repeated incredulously. “You think I could end up having sex with a woman _by accident_? Please. If I ever _did_ , it would be _completely_ deliberate—”

“We. Are. _Friends_ ,” Lily snapped, and shoved Sirius into the store.

—

“You know, I really like this one,” James announced the next morning over breakfast, tapping one of the smaller pictures in the gossip magazine article he was reading. He took another large bite of bacon and chewed thoughtfully a moment, then asked, “Do you think I could have it framed?”

Lily lifted her head from where she’d been resting it on her arm while she pretended to be awake and eating breakfast. “What?” she asked, around a yawn. “Which one?”

James pointed. “Oh, just some little redhead manhandling a black-haired guy wearing leather into a lingerie store.”

“Uh,” said Lily, rubbing her eyes. She narrowed them at the picture.

“It’s especially funny,” James went on brightly, “because he’s about a foot and a half taller than she is and she's kind of just _shoving_ him along.”

Lily let out a quickly strangled squeak and snatched the magazine from him.

“And, you know, she looks a lot like someone I know who’s been insisting I can’t do anything that would seem suspicious…”

“I forgot what kind of store it was,” Lily mumbled, sounding rather pained.

“So I can’t walk next to him in public, but you can put your hands on his butt and take him _underwear shopping_?” James asked, his tone somewhere between irritated and amused.

“Don’t need to go underwear shopping,” growled the big, grumpy creature shuffling through the doorway into the living room, hair sticking up in the back and flattened to the skull on one side, eyeliner smudged all to hell. “Just went.” It rubbed its eyes irritably, smearing the black rings even worse, and threw a death glare in the direction of the sun streaming in the window.

“So I saw,” James replied, grinning with half his mouth. “Morning, Sirius.”

Lily propped her chin on her hand and regarded Sirius solemnly. “Black, you are a mess.”

“Evans, you have a hideously comfortable couch,” returned Sirius, without stopping glaring at the morning. “I think it ate me.”

Nodding, James remarked, “Buying your new girlfriend fancy underthings can really wear you out. Don’t you think?”

“… wha?”

James took the magazine back from Lily and tossed it at Sirius, where it hit his chest and fell to the floor. He bent to pick it up. James waited.

A moment later, Sirius was sputtering. “… and I even fucking _told_ them specifically that I don’t bloody swing that way!”

“Members of the press are not interested in accuracy,” James recited, using his best Lily-voice. “They will see what they want to see and show that to the public. We don’t want them painting the wrong picture of Sirius.”

Grunting, Sirius dropped the magazine back on the floor and hooked a foot around the leg of a chair to drag it out so he could sprawl across it. “Didn’t they call me a home-wrecker in that knicker article you just threw at me?”

“God _damn_ it,” moaned Lily, letting her head fall to the table. It hit with a dull thunk. “We are fucking _friends_ , you utter morons!”

“I think you should just let me grope Sirius on the field before my next game,” James suggested brightly. “We could totally make it look like my fault.”

“You can’t, because I’m locking Sirius in your mother’s basement,” Lily snapped, without lifting her head back up.

Sirius’s eyebrows rose. “Kinky. Girlfriend.”

—

“You’re— _What_ are you doing?” Mrs Potter asked bewilderedly, when Lily showed up at her back door with a death grip on the collar of Sirius’s favourite black leather jacket and dragged him into the kitchen.

“Sit, Sirius.” Lily pushed him into a chair at the table and turned a no-nonsense look on Mrs Potter. “Putting your second son somewhere he can’t get into trouble,” she announced, then patted Sirius on the head. “Stay, Sirius.”

“This is a truly rubbish idea,” Sirius declared. “You’re only getting away with it because you’re small and adorable.”

Lily glared at him. “You’re lucky I’m not locking you in her basement after all.”

“I don’t have a basement.” Blinking, Mrs Potter put her hands on her hips. “And weren’t you around for the trouble he got into while he lived here?”

“Sirius can empty your vodka stash and set fire to as many trees as he wants,” Lily replied reasonably, already heading back toward the still-open door. “As long as he puts them out afterwards and there aren’t any pictures and he can manage to restrain himself from giving James a public erection for at least _one damn day_.”

“Ex _cuse_ me?” exclaimed Mrs Potter.

“I’m in love with James, Mama P,” Sirius answered helpfully, as Lily had already Disapparated.

Mrs Potter waved this away. “Yes, I know.”

“And James is in love with me,” Sirius added, earnest.

Mrs Potter nodded. “I know that too, dear.”

“Oh.” Sirius paused and fiddled with a rip on the thigh of his jeans. “Um. James wants my body bad?”

“Thirteen year old girls know _that_ , Sirius,” Mrs Potter informed him gently, and went to get him a plate of biscuits.

Sirius sighed. “Try telling that to Lily.”

—

Sirius didn’t set fire to any trees.

Lily wasn’t particularly impressed, because he still somehow managed to get himself photographed, sitting on Mrs Potter’s porch with his arm around her.

“… how does this support the idea that I have an addiction?” James questioned, staring at the article with a confused expression on his face.

“Apparently she looks like she’s crying and I’m comforting her,” answered Sirius, with skeptically raised eyebrows.

James shot him a concerned look. “Was she?” he asked.

Sirius shook his head. “She’s laughing at me for hating your shoes and I’m about to strangle her,” he explained.

James hesitated. “Lovingly?”

Sirius nodded.

“Oh. That’s all right then,” said James. He passed the tabloid back in the general direction of Lily, who’d flopped onto Sirius’s bed and thrown an arm over her face the minute she and Sirius had entered the apartment, and hadn’t moved since. “So, how did sending Sirius to my mother to stay out of trouble work for you, Lily?”

“How is this even _possible_?” she moaned, still not moving. “None of Sirius’s other boyfriends had this much of a problem avoiding public frenzy. Not even that stupid skinny interior designer.”

Blushing, James beamed at Lily. “I get to call myself that?”

“My other boyfriends,” Sirius said calmly, leaning a little closer to mirror to make sure his eyeliner wasn’t too smudged, “were not up-and-coming Quidditch sensations. Some of them even had poker faces.”

“I have a poker face!” James protested woundedly.

Lily reached over with the arm not across her face and patted his knee. “No, baby, you don’t.”

“You really don’t,” agreed Sirius. He turned to face the bed where the other two were sitting, propping his hip against the vanity and crossing his booted ankles. “Which is why I really think we ought to just _tell_ everyone, Evans.”

“Oh, really?” Lily pulled her arm away from her face and pushed herself up onto her elbows. “So, what, are you suggesting that I go out and make some kind of public statement about how I dumped James because sitting on a couch and watching you two make out at the other end of it is really hot?”

James snickered. Lily glared at him.

“Actually,” said Sirius, “I think that’s a great idea.

—

Three days — and fourteen rumours of ever-increasing absurdity — later, Lily cracked.

“I am not having anyone’s love child,” she muttered, her head in her hands as she hunched over Sirius’s kitchen table. “Sirius is not an alien and he’s not getting a sex change, James does not have an incurable disease and he’s not doing drugs and he wasn’t cheating. And I _am not under the fucking_ Imperius!”

James kept rubbing his hand across her back in little circles while he covered his smile with his other hand.

Sirius gave her fingers a little squeeze. “Give up, then?” he inquired brightly.

Lily whimpered. They decided that meant ‘yes’.

—

“Okay, _look_ ,” Lily declared a few hours later, when the paparazzi waylaid them on their way into their favourite restaurant. “Once and for all: _I_ broke up with _James_ , not the other way around, but he wasn’t cheating and he really is fine with it and he’s not abusing any substances and there is nothing at all wrong with him, all right?”

The paparazzi sort of gaped at them for a moment. “But,” one of them blurted bemusedly, “then _why_?”

Lily pointed at the men standing next to her. “Because the only thing hotter than James Potter and Sirius Black being each other’s friends is James Potter and Sirius Black being each other’s _boyfriends_ , that’s why.”

Sirius smirked widely and tightened his arm around James’s shoulder. James went a tiny bit pink around the ears and gave them all a face-splitting grin while tightening his own arm around Sirius’s waist.

For good measure, Lily leaned closer to the paparazzi and raised her voice as she concluded, “Anyone who thinks I’m losing out with this arrangement is underestimating how easily James can be convinced to climb into Sirius’s lap and get himself kissed silly.”

“Um,” whispered one of the men at the front of the little crowd.

“That’s what I thought,” said Lily, a self-satisfied look on her face. She gave a pleased nod and turned to lead the way into the restaurant.

The silent staring lasted until well after Lily, James and Sirius had been seated at their usual table.

—

When Sirius strutted out onto the field just before James’s next game started, and James stuck his tongue down Sirius’s throat while Sirius stuck his hand behind James’s back and grabbed his arse where everyone could see, the fans screamed so loudly that the sheer volume of noise on the pitch didn’t reach the same level even once during the entire game. 


End file.
